Vendasta Blog

Voice Search & Listings, with Brooke Henderson

Listings data and voice search are beginning to go hand-in-hand. Voice search is the future, are you ready?

Brooke Henderson, Senior Director of Strategic Partnership Growth at Yext, is our amazing guest on the Conquer Local Podcast. Brooke and George take a deep dive into the listing sources ecosystem. Brooke explains the value of having the capability and the know-how to incorporate voice search into listings data. Set it and forget it is a thing of the past, especially when it comes to listings. Various listing companies are all working with one another to compare their data. Find out how Uber stays current.

The Goods on Brooke Henderson

Henderson got her start by running her very own digital agency called Local Roll Call in 2007. It was eventually acquired by another company in the listings space, but because she had built a directory of small business listings, she was able to start reselling info back before this listings world got started.

Henderson grew up in small businesses; her experience running sales organizations, selling radio advertising, and co-founding a small digital agency has been the driving force behind her success in developing turnkey reseller strategies in the world of digital marketing since 2012. The demand to have the best marketing strategies for their small business clients are the sole focus of her partners, and her passion is to give them the strategies and resources to execute, drive revenue, and decrease client attrition with digital knowledge management.

Takeaways

Building Monthly Recurring Revenue

Let's pretend that you are an agency owner and you are looking to build monthly recurring revenue. Specifically using Yext, how would you go about doing that?

It’s a common question, digital knowledge management is what Yext stands for and is the foundation to any business.

“The beauty of what we do at Yext is we strengthen what an agency already does or what they're really, really good at. If you're driving awareness by website, by a search engine marketing, by radio advertising, or by TV, you've got a great strategy there. But in that moment of truth, if you're not found after you've been made aware of, if that business isn't found then you've pretty much just wasted money.”
- Brooke Henderson, Senior Director of Strategic Partnership, Yext

Digital knowledge management strengthens what an agency does at its core and creates additional value. If agencies are looking for more monthly recurring revenue, they should ensure that everything that they sell has digital knowledge management attached to it. This makes it become a very sticky solution to keep their customers engaged.

Listing Sources

Let’s say you run a marketing campaign and look at the Google My Business data to find that the number of searches start to increase, the phone calls start to increase, and the driving directions start to increase that is directly attributed to the work that you’re doing by building awareness around the brand or the business.

You also need to remain in control because the sneaky thing about digital knowledge is it’s changing and evolving constantly. Platforms and technology evolve around users. The Hilton Hotel for example, has a very popular app that’s used by travel consumers, but what they offer is a great feature of local businesses for the consumer when they're visiting that particular property. It's really important to ensure, no matter the moment of truth, whether they hear it on the radio, see it in a display ad, or see it on TV, that when the consumer sees it on Hilton, they know they'll be able to find them and provide the best information there.

Customers often ask if they really need their data right on 70 different sources. As a salesperson, what would you say back to them?

Using the example of the Hilton app, most businesses wouldn't know they do not have to go to the Hilton to get their information listed on their app. Customers have to have their information in Foursquare; a lot of businesses may know what Foursquare is or they may not. Often their information is wrong because it's outdated. So, if they're not in Foursquare, they're not in Hilton, they're missing that consumer that's ready to do business with them in that moment of intent.

Uber's data comes from Foursquare. Uber's data comes from a lot of different places, and the majority of these platforms are buying and selling data in between one another and they're comparing data between one another.

Voice Search

“Recently my dentist dropped the insurance that I carry. Now, I'm a busy mom. I have six kids and I'm very much structured when it comes to my calendar. So my voice question was, I need a dentist with Saturday appointments that carries my specific insurance and is a pediatric dentist. That's a lot of information. So, if a business isn't really readily making aware to the general public what it is that makes them unique, or why a consumer would actually visit them, they're losing money. They're losing sales, period.”
- Brooke Henderson, Senior Director of Strategic Partnership, Yext

When presenting this to a prospect, it’s a unique story that has to be told based on what the business is selling so they can understand that by not taking advantage of the technology and the tactic they're missing out on revenue. Right now many states and provinces have no texting laws and bluetooth laws that are forcing us to use our voice.

We are busy people who are continually doing 12 things at once—multitasking. We use a GPS system to ask questions or use our phones, and we are constantly on the move. As a result, technology is only going to continue to become more sophisticated. We're going to be forced to use our voices. Technology is even getting closer through our smart watches and all of the devices that we're wearing. Voice is going to continue to drive the conversation and businesses need to be ready for it.

Advice from Brooke

“When we first started going down this path of voice, it was predicted that by 2020 50% of search would be voice activated. That was in 2020, which is just next year. And again, I can't stress this enough, think about your own behaviors. The minute that you start doing that the light goes off again as, "Yeah, I do talk to it," and I think our kids are kind of ahead of the curve when it comes to voice. So, even this newer generation of consumers, they're becoming more tech savvy and they're becoming more demanding when it comes to what it is that they're looking for, and they're all doing it by voice.” - Brooke Henderson, Senior Director of Strategic Partnership Growth, Yext

About The Author

Colleen is the Content Producer at Vendasta. Her passions are marketing, equality, and blogging. She enjoys adventures in the mountains and in her hometown of YXE. You can often find her in a plant store or with her dog, Frank.